Great Throughts Treasury

"Through endless time God's greatest gift is continuously given in silence. But whenmankind becomes completely deaf to the thunder of His Silence God incarnates as Man."

"God has come again and again in various Forms, has spoken again and again in different words and different languages the Same One Truth — but how many are there that live up to it? Instead of making Truth the vitalbreath of his life, man compromises by making over and over againa mechanical religion of it—a handy staff to lean on in times of adversity, a soothing balm for his conscience or a tradition to be followed."

"There is only one question. And once you know the answer to that question there are no more to ask. That one question is the Original Question. And to that Original Question there is only one Final Answer. But between that Question and its Answer there are innumerable false answers."

"These false answers — such as, I am stone, I am bird, I am animal, I am man, I am woman, I am great, I am small — are, in turn, received, tested and discarded until the Question arrives at the right and Final Answer, I AM GOD."

"The Avatar draws upon Himself the universal suffering, but He is sustained under the stupendous burden by His Infinite Bliss and His infinite sense of humour. The Avatar is the Axis or Pivot of the universe, the Pin of the grinding-stones of evolution, and so has a responsibility towards everyone and everything."

"As a rule each action of an ordinary person is motivated by a solitary aim serving a solitary purpose; it can hit only one target at a time and bring about one specific result. But with the Avatar, He being the Centre of each one, any single action of His on the gross plane brings about a network of diverse results for people and objects everywhere."

"The Avatar does not as a rule interfere with the working out of human destinies. He will do so only in times of grave necessity — when He deems itabsolutely necessary from His all — encompassing point of view. For a single alteration in the planned and imprinted pattern in which each line and dot is interdependent, means a shaking up and a re-linking of an unending chain of possibilities and events."

"Forgiveness is the best charity. (It is easy to give the poor money and goods when one has plenty, but to forgive is hard; but it is the best thing if one can do it.)"

"Whether men soar to outer space or dive to the bottom of the deepest ocean they will find themselves as they are, unchanged, because they will not have forgotten themselves nor remembered to exercise the charity of forgiveness."

"Supremacy over others will never cause a man to find a change in himself; the greater his conquests the stronger is his confirmation of what his mind tells him—that there is no God other than his own power. And he remains separated from God, the Absolute Power. But when the same mind tells him that there is something which may be called God, and, further, when it prompts him to search for God that he may see Him face to face, he begins to forget himself and to forgive others for whatever he has suffered from them. And when he has forgiven everyone and has completely forgotten himself, he finds that God has forgiven him everything, and he remembers Who, in reality, he is."

"There are no divisions as such, but there is an appearance of separateness because of ignorance. This means that everything is of ignorance and that every one is Ignorance personified."

"When the bubble of ignorance bursts the self realizes its oneness with the indivisible Self. Words that proceed from the Source of Truth have real meaning. But when men speak these words as their own, the words become meaningless."

"This whole universe, with all its vastness, grandeur and beauty, is nothing but sheer imagination. In spite of so many discoveries, researches and scientific knowledge, the creation remains a great unsolved riddle."

"There are always 56 God-realised souls. Now, out of these 56, five are sent out into the world. But in every Avataric period these five become one, thus demonstrating the cycle when the Avatar appears in form. Therefore, the Avatar exists in the heart of these five as one."

"Happiest is he who expects no happiness from others. Love delights and glorifies in giving, not receiving. So learn to love and give, and not to expect anything from others."

"Remember that the first step in spirituality is not to speak ill of others. All human beings have weaknesses and faults. Yet they are all God in their being. Until they become Realized, they have their imperfections. Therefore, before trying to find faults in others and speaking ill of them, try to find your own weaknesses and correct those."

"Hopelessness means renunciation of all hopes. Aimlessness means renunciation of all aims. Helplessness means renunciation of all help. No master, no disciple, means renunciation of spirituality. And the New Life I have in mind eventually means absolute renunciation. Therefore, if any one asks you what this New Life is, say, 'Absolute and perfect renunciation.' If they ask, 'Renunciation of what?' say, 'Of everything — aims, hopes, help and life itself."

"God is eternally free. To realize God is to attain liberation from the bondage of illusion. The greater the strife and the more intensified the struggle to attain liberation, the more the shackles of illusion are felt, because this very action brings greater awareness of the illusion, which then becomes all the more impressive and realistic. All actions, whether good or bad, just or unjust, charitable or uncharitable, are responsible in making the bond of illusion firmer and tighter. The goal is to achieve perfect inaction, which does not mean merely inactivity. When the self is absent, one achieves inaction in one's every action."

"Live more and more in the Present, which is ever beautiful and stretches away beyond the limits of the past and the future."

"One has to go beyond the mind to experience the spiritual bliss of desirelessness."

"If you experience that same longing and thirst for Union with Me as one who has been lying for days in the hot sun of the Sahara experiences for the longing for water, then you will realize Me."

"The entire life of the personal ego is continually in the grip of wanting, i. e., an attempt to seek fulfilment of desires through things that change and vanish. But there can be no real fulfilment through the transient things."

"The satisfaction derived from the fleeting things of life is not lasting; and the wants of man remain unfulfilled. There is thus a general sense of dissatisfaction accompanied by all kinds of worries."

"Open your heart by weeding out all desires and by harbouring only one longing—the longing for union with the Ultimate Reality. The Ultimate Reality is not to be sought in the changing things of external environment, but in one's own being."

"Spirituality must make man more human. It is a positive attitude of releasing all that is good and noble and beautiful in man. It also contributes to all that is gracious and lovely in the environment. It does not require the external renunciation of worldly activities or the avoiding of duties and responsibilities. It only requires that, while performing the worldly activities or discharging the responsibilities arising from the specific place and position of the individual, the inner spirit should remain free from the burden of desires."

"Everyone is seeking happiness, but few have it; for, lasting happiness dawns only when there is complete freedom from wants. This highest state of non-wanting may outwardly seem to imply inaction and easy of attainment. But, if anyone tries just to sit quietly without inwardly wanting anything and with full consciousness (i.e., without going to sleep), he will realize that such a state of non-wanting is very difficult to attain and that it can be sustained only through tremendous spiritual activity."

"The individual mind is the seat of the ego or the consciousness of being isolated. It creates the limited individuality, which at once feeds and is fed by the illusion of duality time and change. So, in order to know the self as it is, consciousness has to be completely freed from the limitation of the individual mind. In other words, the individual mind has to disappear but consciousness has to be retained."

"Be brave, be happy. I and you are one. And the Infinite that eternally belongs to me will one day belong to every individual."

"Man is only partially satisfied in his attempt to have the fulfilment of his desires. And this partial satisfaction fans and increases the flame of craving instead of extinguishing it. So greed always finds an endless field of conquest, and leaves the man endlessly dissatisfied."

"Desire for nothing except desirelessness. Hope for nothing except to rise above all hopes. Want nothing and you will have everything."

"Life and love are inseparable from each other. Where there is life, there is love."

"The intellect of most persons is harnessed by innumerable wants. Such a life is, from the spiritual point of view the lowest type of human existence. The highest type of human existence is free from all wants; and it is characterised by sufficiency or contentment."

"The entire process of withdrawing consciousness from the universe and becoming conscious of the Self is accompanied by an increasing control of all the vehicles of consciousness. Such control is made possible by the vivification and activisation of unused centres of control; and the functioning of new centres brings, in its train, a number of occult powers. These new powers are commonly known as siddhis; and they can come before the aspirant has become spiritually perfect. In fact, egoism can flourish through the acquisition of such occult powers ; and the aspirant may not only take delight in possessing them, but might actually use them for mundane purposes, from which he has not necessarily freed himself. Siddhis are, therefore, rightly regarded as obstacles in the attainment of realization."

"God cannot be explained... God can only be lived."

"Selfishness inevitably leads to dissatisfaction and disappointment, because desires are endless. The problem of happiness is, therefore, the problem of dropping out desires. Desires, however, cannot be effectively overcome through mechanical repression. They can be annihilated only through knowledge."

"A sane attitude to death is possible only if life is considered impersonally and without any attachment to particular forms, but this is the very thing which the worldly man finds it difficult to do, because of his entanglement with specific forms."

"Whether man knows it or not, there is for him only one aim in life, and eventually he realizes this when he consciously experiences his own eternal and infinite state of "I Am God.""

"The sorrow of death, on closer analysis, turns out to be rooted in selfishness. The person, who loses his beloved may intellectually know that life, as a whole, has elsewhere compensated for the loss; but his only feeling is, What is that to me? Death becomes a cause of unending sorrow, when a man looks at it from his own personal point of view; from the point of view of life in general, it is an episode of minor importance."

"In life after death, the experiences of pain and pleasure become much more intense than what they were in the earthly life. And These subjective states of intensified suffering and joy are respectively called hell and heaven. Hell and heaven are states, of the mind; they should not be looked upon as being places; and, though, from the subjective point of view, they mean a great deal for the individualised soul, they are both illusions within the greater illusion of the phenomenal world."

"Before Karma is created, the individual has a sort of freedom to choose what it shall be; but after it has been accomplished, it becomes a factor, which cannot be ignored and which has either to be expended through the results, which it invites, or counter-acted by fresh and appropriate Karma."

"So long for one thing; be restless for one thing; long and wait for one thing that will kill the million other longings. Long for union with the Beloved."

"It is your right to be happy and yet you create your own un-happiness by wanting things. Wanting is the source of per-petual restlessness. If you do not get the thing you wanted, you are disappointed. And if you get, you want more and more of it and become unhappy."

"Say, "I do not want any-thing," and be happy. The continuous realization of the futility of wants will eventually lead you to Knowledge. This Self-knowledge will give you the freedom from wants to the road to abiding happiness."

"Meditation involves bringing the subconscious contents of the mind to the forefront of consciousness."

"The pleasure and the pain, experienced in the life on earth, the success or failure, which attend it, the attainments and obstacles, with which it is strewed, the friends and foes, which make their appearance in it, are all deter-mined by the Karma of past lives. Karmic deter-mination is popularly designated as fate. Fate however is not some foreign and oppressive principle. Fate is man's own creation pursuing him from past lives: and just as it has been shaped by past Karma, it can also be modified, remoulded and even undone, through Karma in the present life."

"Knowledge of the intellect alone is on the same footing as mere information; and, being superficial, it moves on the surface of life. It gives the shadow and not the substance of reality. The hidden depths of the ocean of life can be gauged only by the plumber of the heart."

"Those who cleanse their hearts of the embittering poison of selfishness, hate and greed shall find God as their own true Self. When you find and realize God, the problem of selfishness and its numerous expressions melts away like mist before the sun. In God and as God, all life reveals itself as being really one and indivisible, and all separateness created by identification with human or sub-human forms is seen to be illusory."

"Aggression must be met with resistance, and non-violence of the brave is possible only for advanced souls, who have through rigorous discipline eradicated from their minds all forms of greed and hate. But so far as people in general are concerned, it is undesirable to ask them to observe the external formula of non-violence when it is their clear duty to resist aggression in self-defence or in the defence of weaker brothers. General insistence upon non-violence can only lead to people becoming cowardly, irresponsible, and inert, putting the responsibility upon others."

"In God-realization, the soul drops its separate consciousness and transcends duality in the abiding knowledge of its identity with the Infinite Reality."

"GOD is infinite. He is beyond the opposites of good and bad, right and wrong, virtue and vice, birth and death, pleasures and suffering. Such dual aspects do not belong to God."